You’re IT! You are a tech pro, your company is involved in a legal matter and you’re now hearing all about “ESI” “EDD” and E-Discovery. So what is this E-Discovery thing?

Government Technology - E-Discovery: What Technology Professionals Must Know

“In 2006, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure - the court process for civil lawsuits - were changed because more than 95 percent of all information is now electronic. Many other states have followed suit, and litigation in the U.S. is now dominated by electronically stored information (ESI). ESI has spawned a new consulting marketplace of consultants, IT professionals and expert witnesses who specialize in the identification and control of ESI. As a result, IT professionals need to understand the Law of Evidence and Rules of Civil Procedure as much as they do the server technology and storage area networks. [GD: Emphasis added]

Lawyers, on the other hand, have yet to master IT, not just IT lingo, but how IT professionals manage their business. So there is confluence of IT and law that has subsumed litigation in the U.S. Outside the U.S. courts and arbitration systems, we do not subscribe to the open-end litigation which happens in the United States.

In the U.S., litigation is ruled by state or federal courts systems, or by private arbitrations governed by the rules of the American Arbitration Association, or some other organization like Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS), a private alternative dispute resolution (ADR) provider.

This article gives some basic information about e-discovery to help IT professionals understand the law in a straight-forward manner.

What Is Discovery?

Generally after a lawsuit (or arbitration) is filed until just before the trial (or hearing, in an arbitration) is a period of time referred to as discovery. …

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Records Retention Policies

Because ESI has become fundamental to litigation, organizations need to have a records retention policy; otherwise, how can an organization without such a policy explain to a judge why certain ESI was retained and other deleted? …

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Disaster Recovery

Everyone in IT knows that each computer will fail at some time since every box has components with a mean time between failures, so failure or disaster are a fundamental part of the use of IT. Accordingly IT plans for these failures or disasters by doing routine backup of systems and data to avoid business interruption. As an example, when my office had a flood on the 33rd floor of our building and our data center was shut down, our business was not adversely impacted since we had good backup procedures already in place.

IT sees backup as a disaster recovery issue; however, judges and lawyers think that copies of ESI are easily available to them since IT does backups regardless of the systems involved. [GD: Emphasis added] …

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Conclusions

Since ESI is prevalent in litigation today, the discussion about IT and ESI is a part of every lawsuit, and at some in your career it will likely impact you. It is impossible to avoid. [GD: Emphasis added] This article should be a starting point for you to understand IT's role as more lawyers appear and ask for help.”

[Insert standard Greg comment about you, IT, EDD/E-Discovery and how you can’t hide from it, here]

[Insert standard Greg comment that as an IT guy or gal the more you know about EDD, the better of you’ll be when the poop hits the blender (Gross!… Sorry… but a sudden and unexpected EDD emergency can be just as gross as that image… )]

All kidding aside, as an IT professional you don’t live a closed data center anymore. People beyond your users want the data. All the data they can get… People who are looking for “smoking guns” and people who are trying to help but don’t understand technology or your systems. You just have to look at any case today and you’ll hear about “that email from…”

The more you know about ESI/EDD the less the pain will be, for you and your company.

(via EDD Blog Online - E-Discovery: What Technology Professionals Must Know)